As holiday plans start to take shape, those living with a medical condition may find the biggest hurdle isn’t securing flights or hotels – but getting insured.
Even when cover is offered, it can come with eye-watering premiums, meaning a one-week trip can cost thousands.
But there are tricks you can use to increase your chances of buying cover at a reasonable price. Here, insurance experts and readers who have experienced difficulties explain the words to avoid when applying and the steps to take to get the right cover for you.
Robert Minton-Taylor, 77, from North Yorkshire, discovered how quickly a serious diagnosis can turn travel insurance into a minefield, even though he is fit to travel.
He had a stroke in 2019 and was diagnosed with stage-four prostate cancer in May 2024. However, he has medical reassurance that he is able to travel and has had supportive input from his NHS oncologist.
But when Robert tried to get travel insurance for a week-long city break to Malaga last August – a holiday he sorely needed – he was repeatedly declined by companies, including specialist cancer insurers.
The rejections often came after long, intrusive phone calls and filling in the same information repeatedly on forms online, only to be finally told they wouldn’t cover his trip to Spain.
Robert says the main stumbling block wasn’t the ‘terminal cancer’, as he’d been given six years to live and insurers typically set a cut-off of at least six months prognosis. The problem was a grey area in his records from eight months before he applied for insurance – swelling in his legs and ankles, noted as ‘probably’ related to steroids used alongside chemotherapy.
Robert Minton-Taylor had a stroke in 2019 and was diagnosed with stage-four prostate cancer in May 2024, but was reassured that he can travel
Robert says: ‘In insurance terms, “probably” translated to an undiagnosed condition. And combined with a previous stroke, it effectively made me uninsurable.
‘Travel insurers, I found, want black-and-white answers and not any medical uncertainty.’
What finally helped Robert find cover was an intervention from his oncologist, who offered to change the word ‘probably’ to ‘most likely’ (without claiming absolute certainty).
Robert says this wording tweak was enough to remove the ‘undiagnosed’ red flag that was causing insurers to rule him out for cover. Even then, the insurer would cover him while excluding claims specifically connected to leg swelling.
After weeks of dead ends, and quotes as extreme as £2,000 and £3,500 for a week in Europe, he succeeded with InsureandGo, which charged him £973 for a fully comprehensive silver policy. He’s since arranged another trip – seven nights in Malta in April – again using InsureandGo, for £1,088.
Robert says: ‘The travel insurance system is exhausting and opaque if you have a serious medical condition – lots of algorithms, little perceived transparency and a process that can punish honest disclosure and medical nuance.
‘My success came down to persistence, precise clinical wording that insurers could accept, and finding a provider willing to stick with me and treat me like a person rather than a risk code.’
Insurers are sensitive to wording indicating uncertainty or that you await test results.
Professor Adrian Crellin is an oncologist from Leeds who has prostate cancer
Other words that may raise red flags include ‘unexplained’, ‘unknown cause’, ‘under investigation’ or ‘pending treatment’.
Cancer support charity Maggie’s says cancer patients are routinely refused cover or are quoted unaffordable premiums, even when they’re in a stable condition. This forces many to travel without insurance – or not go at all.
The travel insurance sector can be difficult to navigate if you have a pre-existing medical condition. Some policies won’t cover claims for these, while others will allow you to pay a top-up fee to include this in the policy.
If the price is an extra £200 beyond the standard policy, the insurer must signpost customers to specialist insurers, under Financial Conduct Authority rules.
It’s always best to be honest about existing medical conditions, in case you have an issue while abroad and the insurer refuses to pay for any treatment.
Professor Adrian Crellin, an oncologist from Leeds who has prostate cancer, says the travel insurance industry hasn’t kept pace with modern medicine, and a lot of factors come together to make it harder for cancer patients to get cover. He says many insurers ‘often don’t understand the difference between treated or cured cancer versus a diagnosis or having metastatic cancer’.
He adds: ‘They often don’t know the difference between incurable and terminal, which are not the same. Metastatic disease is incurable but often very, very treatable, yet the perception is metastatic disease is terminal. It isn’t always.’
A major issue, he argues, is how decisions are made by insurance companies using very simplistic algorithms which lack the nuance a human could pick out.
Professor Crellin, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2016, has found it difficult to obtain insurance for travelling. For a recent seven-day trip to the Arctic he was quoted £2,000 by several insurers before managing to get cover for £200 through Insureancewith, which specialises in cover for cancer patients.
Professor Crellin says Insurancewith asked ‘intelligent questions’ and understood his condition was stable. He adds: ‘More insurers should look at individual cases and not rely on outdated algorithms. What some patients do is lie, take the risk of travelling uninsured or they don’t go on holiday any more, which is terrible.’
Debbie King, a luxury travel adviser, says she tells clients to always plan their policy carefully. Be upfront about medical declarations and don’t start by looking for quotes online, she warns.
‘If you get a quote online first, then call, they can see what you’ve been quoted and your price will remain at the online price. Call them, get the quote, then get passed through to the medical underwriters who will advise and adjust accordingly,’ she says.
This underlines Robert’s experience – if you can obtain human intervention, you have a better chance of success.
The British Insurance Brokers’ Association has a list of approved specialist providers that provide cover if you have a serious medical condition (biba.org.uk).
MoneyHelper also has an online list of 19 insurers offering policies to those with serious medical conditions (moneyhelper.org.uk).
Garry Nelson of InsureandGo, which provided Robert’s cover, says it uses expert knowledge to assess individual risks on and offline. ‘Robert’s case highlights the complexity of his conditions but also that he’s made as full a declaration as possible, allowing us to provide cover at a price reflective of his age, medical history and places he wants to visit,’ he says.
‘For complex cases, customers can speak with real people at our UK call centres. This helps them to consider the options fully and make informed decisions on the best and most appropriate cover for their medical conditions.’